


When the Words I Have Are Not Enough

by LazyWriterGirl



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F, Hi Glee Fandom Does Anyone Remember Me, I'll just leave this here, Mostly Angst and Introspection, Optimistic Ending, Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net, Reworked Fic, Sort of A Love Letter to Looking For Alaska, rarepair hell, unspecified AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 15:05:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8805538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LazyWriterGirl/pseuds/LazyWriterGirl
Summary: Marley loves Quinn and won't let her go. It's tearing her apart.Quinn loves Rachel and can't let her go. It has already ruined her.Marley and Quinn are in a relationship, and nobody can really understand why.Not even Marley.And certainly not Quinn.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own Glee, obviously, and all the bolded words are from John Green's "Looking for Alaska" which I also don't own (unless we're talking about a _supremely_ beat-up copy of the novel).

She will never be Quinn’s first choice, her position in the blonde’s life permanently fixed at consolation prize. She will never be the one for whom Quinn intends her smile, never be the one for whom Quinn breathes and lives and strives. She will never be the one and only in Quinn’s world because in Quinn’s world there is already a one and only; and she is out of reach now, married and living the glamorous life of a true star with the man she loves at her side.

Still, Marley wonders if it would be so bad to dream of a life where one day, just for once if not ever again, Quinn will smile for her, solely for her and not for the woman for whom Marley has taken to playing substitute in Quinn’s life. She does not know how things have become what they are, but she is in love and she is alive because of it; alive because of how fiercely she loves the blonde woman who’d walked into the glee club room with a smirk and an air of jaded confidence. Marley knows that she is a romantic of the highest order, but surely, surely a love like hers is only waiting to be repaid…?

It is only after their first night together—when Quinn’s lips round over the letters of a name that is far too much “Rachel” and nowhere near enough “Marley” that Marley’s optimism begins to wither at the edges.

It’s hopeless, she decides.

  
***

 

“Welcome home,” she says one night after Quinn’s been gone for hours longer than anticipated. She moves in to give the blonde a hug, just a sign to show she’s there, only to feel still-strong arms blocking her own (she doesn’t know if Quinn still works out, but perhaps the strength in the other woman’s arms is little more than a relic of the bygone days—a gift from the rigours of cheerleading with Coach Sylvester at the helm).

The heavy scent of liquor and smoke clings to the porous leather of the blonde’s jacket, washing over Marley as Quinn brushes past her.

It smells like desolation.

“Gonna lie down.” They don’t speak again, and Marley opts for the couch instead of the bed, mostly because Quinn hadn’t suggested that her company would be appreciated. 

At one point during the most ungodly hours of morning Marley feels something slide down from the top of the sofa towards her, eventually resting on her shoulder. One of Quinn’s most well-loved paperbacks greets her when she turns her head, a bright pink bookmark protruding from the top of the weathered pages. Marley turns to the page to find a sticky note pointing towards a sentence, which she reads as she imagines Quinn is expecting her to do.

**What you must understand about me is that I’m a deeply unhappy person.** She nods even though she’s not even sure if Quinn is still around to see it, only to have an answer when she feels soft lips press to the corner of her mouth seconds later. The pressure is gone before she can make anything of it, though she’s not sure if it’s because of a lack of emotion on the blonde’s part, or the fact that her cheeks are still wet with tears. Somehow she finds herself crawling into bed minutes later. She’s pleased when, after draping an arm over the blonde, she feels the reassuring press of Quinn’s back against her chest. The little jolt of hope that she feels dies out when Quinn scoots forward as Marley’s warmth settles evenly over her skin.

 

She doesn’t understand how they can carry on living this way. Waking in silence, dressing in silence, cooking in silence, eating in silence, leaving in silence, returning to silence, _fucking_ …in relative silence. It’s a miracle if Quinn utters over one hundred words to her throughout the course of a week, and Marley misses the days before Rachel Berry-Hudson’s wedding, the days before Quinn had become so desperately entangled in her own thoughts that she could shut out the whole world for days upon end. The days when Marley had sometimes felt that Quinn, for all of her strange ways and stranger silences, was beginning to see Marley for who she was, and not as a replacement for Rachel. The days when Quinn had spoken at length for hours on end, expounding on topics that Marley only had only vaguely understood.

 

She would much rather have that back then have to live this way.

 

The silence continues until Marley is considering, very seriously, accepting the offer that Santana had put in place—“If things ever get too _fucking_ stupid with Quinn, Britts and I have got your back.” Something in her holds her back from calling her old mentor, but every moment spent in silence wears away at her resolve. Then one day it ends and Quinn tugs her into their bedroom with an urgency that Marley has come to be familiar with. This time is sweeter than the last, she thinks. This time, she’s doing this with me because she loves me. Marley winds her hands through Quinn’s long-again blonde hair and holds onto her thoughts as Quinn’s teeth graze her skin lower, lower, _lower…_ until, inevitably, she knows that this is no different from the last time.                   

Marley should know better than to get her hopes up this way, but she can’t bring herself to learn from her own mistakes and so…still, she hopes.

 

***

 

Marley leaves Quinn for the first time the week before Christmas. She doesn’t know why she does it, but she just begins to pack, leaving the dishes still-wet on the drying rack, and once she’s done sits quietly and waits for Quinn to get home. As soon as the blonde woman’s right foot hits the threshold Marley is standing. “This isn’t working and you know it isn’t. So I’ll be out of your hair and on my way. Thank you for everything, Quinn.” And then, because she’s feeling more than a little bittersweet about it all, the brunette quotes from Quinn’s favourite book, “ **At some point, you just pull off the Band-Aid, and it hurts, but then it’s over and you’re relieved.** ”

Then, because she isn’t sure why she’s doing this, she kisses Quinn one last time and walks out into the hall, down the stairs, and across the street to the nearest bus station, crying all the while. Luckily Santana and Brittany live not more than an hour away, and they gladly take her in—just as Santana had promised they would. They’re grateful for her presence, not only because she offers them the chance to speak to an adult who isn’t themselves, but because little Felicia Lopez-Pierce absolutely adores her _tia_ Marley.

She manages to stay away without any guilt.

 

For the first day.

 

The second day, she worries over if Quinn is eating enough.

 

The third, she hopes that the blonde has been bundling up properly.

 

By the fourth day Marley is nearly inconsolable, and that continues on for a while.

 

The seventh day, early on Christmas morning, she receives a text from the blonde – **We didn’t talk much. But we didn’t need to.** – Marley makes a decision the second she sees the message.

 

Santana clicks her tongue as she helps Marley load her things into the trunk of the Lopez-Pierce household’s Nissan. “You have to stop letting her treat you like this Marley. Look, Q’s my best friend and I love her, but I also love you. You don’t deserve this. Next time I see Q she’s getting an ass-kicking, courtesy of Lima Heights.”

Marley giggles but shakes her head. “She may not say it, but I know Quinn loves me. It may not be like how she loved Puck, or how she loved… _loves_ Rachel, but it’s enough for me. I’m happy, Santana.”

The look on the Latina’s face is priceless, the very picture of disbelief. “You’re not happy, Marley. Why don’t you ask her why she keeps you around if she’s clearly not as in love as you are?”

Marley pauses, knowing that Santana won’t just let this go; the older woman is far too stubborn for that. It’s…difficult to explain, now that she’s thinking about it. Her dynamic with Quinn is not the kind that gets popularized in romance novels; not that Marley minds. Eventually, after it becomes clear that Santana really is waiting for a response, she breathes deeply and responds with a quote from Quinn’s book. It’s one that she’s memorized over the course of several years with the blonde.

“ **I’d rather wonder than get answers I couldn’t live with.** ”

Santana just gives her that hard, probing look that she only gives when she knows something else is up. Still, she doesn’t press the matter, which is all the same to Marley.

 

She’s surprised to find the door open when she gets back to the apartment and even more surprised when Quinn literally tosses her duffel bag across the room and holds Marley close to her. It’s the first time in a few years they’ve just held each other close for the sake of being close, without there being a more, well, _pressing_ need to be attended to. Quinn’s hands reach up to stroke Marley’s hair, eventually settling at the nape of her neck, and Marley holds on to Quinn as if she were the only thing keeping Marley from drowning.

Quinn does not let go of her as she brings the rest of her things in, and Marley feels herself positively _thriving_ under the older woman’s grip.

They have a pleasant Christmas, and the light mood manages to stay with them until New Year’s Eve. Then Rachel’s on the screen as the countdown runs out and Quinn kisses Marley hard but she’s not there at all. She’s off somewhere else, sometime else, with some other brunette who isn’t Marley.

The disappointment is more crushing than she’d expected, but Marley hopes that she and Quinn are getting somewhere, that soon, substitution will no longer be the reason why Quinn seeks her out time and time again.

           

***

 

Throughout the course of the next year Marley leaves Quinn three more times and is kicked out by the blonde twice. They’ve become _that_ couple. The one that all their friends worry about and the kind of couple that they themselves have never held sympathy for; and yet they still find their way back to each other over and over and over again.

Marley used to think it was romantic, but ever since the first incident in which she was kicked out she’s grown more detached from the idea of love. She doesn’t know quite why she stays with Quinn anymore. The blonde has never been physically abusive, or even emotionally so—only distant, never cruel—and the sex is admittedly fantastic, but Quinn is far too intense in her silence, too concentrated in her own world to even bother acknowledging Marley’s part in it. It’s enough to destroy any small hope Marley has in her future happiness.

Since Marley’s first attempt to leave, Quinn rarely speaks to her in her own words. It’s always quotations, almost all the time, and Marley has taken to reading that stupid worn-out paperback of Quinn’s every night. She’ll probably never absorb the delicately powerful words as well as the blonde obviously has, but she’s been getting better every day.

One night during their after-dinner America’s Next Top Model binge-watching episodes Quinn turns to her and says, with all the seriousness of a doctor informing a deceased patient’s loved one of a loss, “ **They love their hair because they’re not smart enough to love something more interesting.** ” Marley laughs so spontaneously that the blonde beside her evidently can’t stifle her own mirth, and they’re laughing up a storm as Tyra Banks and her co-judges berate some skinny waif for her awkward facial expressions.

“ **Sometimes I don’t get you.** ” Marley says, and Quinn’s eyes flash with recognition. It should be frightening how the other woman can pick up the difference between the phrase as a casual saying and the phrase as a quotation, but Quinn does and Marley finds that it isn’t frightening to her. Quinn could never truly scare her.

“ **You never get me, that’s the whole point.** ” It’s the response that the original speaker of the words gets in the book, but even still it chills Marley to her core. She wants to get Quinn. That’s all that she wants.

All she could ever hope for, at this point.

           

***

 

It takes what feels like an eternity, but their relationship finally shifts. A little less than four years after the first time Marley left Quinn, there is an accident.

The blonde had just been out buying groceries and had slipped and fell on her way up the stairs. Luckily one of the teens living in the unit under them had seen her shortly after she’d fallen and had called an ambulance, making sure to keep Quinn warm as she lay broken halfway down the staircase.

Upon hearing the news Marley contacts everybody, even Rachel (although she really would rather _not_ ) and the whole Glee club has been to see Quinn in her hospital bed at least thrice by the end of the week.

Rachel is one of the ones who lingers, much to Marley’s chagrin, but it’s Quinn who was injured and it’s Quinn who Rachel is here for, so the taller brunette says nothing and makes herself scarce. The first week back at the apartment Rachel stays over and Quinn (who must be, according to her stern physician, the only occupant of her bed until she’s healed completely) directs Marley to the couch so that Rachel can have the guest-room’s queen-size bed all to herself.

Marley doesn’t argue—it’s Quinn’s home, technically, more so than hers, and Quinn is the injured one so…

She can’t lie; she’s always been slightly envious of Rachel Berry where Quinn Fabray is concerned, but now? Now Marley is just _hurt_. Quinn doesn’t even notice her as the days go on; it’s always Rachel, Rachel, Rachel.

It would have continued on in this vein for a while, but for the fact that Rachel up and leaves in the middle of the night one night. They don’t find out until the next morning when all that they have left of the tiny diva is a hastily written note explaining that she had been called by her manager and needed to leave immediately.

The mood in the apartment is considerably dampened by Rachel’s departure. Still, Marley does not leave Quinn’s bedside unless by the request of the blonde herself. Quinn starts speaking again, even if only a little, and still using quotations wherever possible, but she also seems to have a new appreciation for Marley’s devotion, and the obvious love that the sweet woman still carries for her despite everything Quinn has failed to do. It would appear that she _has_ noticed Marley’s attention; something that the brunette cannot help but be happy about, even if that’s not really important.

For her part, Marley isn’t interested in proving herself to Quinn anymore.

She just hopes for the blonde to get better.

           

***

 

A few days following Rachel’s sudden departure the diva calls the apartment phone, asking ever-so-nicely to speak to her “dearest friend Quinn”. Marley gives the phone to Quinn, wordlessly (because even without the speaker on Rachel’s voice carries remarkably well), but the blonde motions for her to stay if she wants, so she does, sitting at the armchair to Quinn’s left. It’s probably Marley’s favourite seat in the whole apartment now.

She watches uncomfortably as Quinn argues with Rachel, worrying about if the blonde’s stress is going to affect her condition. Realistically it won’t do anything, not unless Quinn gets up and starts to run around, or start kicking things, or something equally extreme…but still. She’s never seen the blonde so emotional, and even as Marley half-listens to the reaming that Quinn is giving her starlet friend/crush/almost-obsession/cause-for-living she wants to cry; because Rachel is the only one that seems to be able to make Quinn _feel_.

Almost at the exact moment that the thought slides into Marley’s head, Quinn hangs up and tosses the phone into the trash bin with surprisingly accurate aim. The pair sits in silence for a while, until Quinn’s fingers ghost over Marley’s shoulder, her other hand holding out a familiar paperback. It’s almost falling apart now—they’ll need a new copy soon. Marley has been reading bits and pieces of it for Quinn’s amusement, seeing as she should be lying back and not crouched over a book, according to the doctor.

“Where should I start?” Marley asks kindly. She knows that Quinn is going to wave her hand dismissively, as if to say “Anywhere” and when the blonde does exactly this, she flips open to where she’d stopped the night before. “ **I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.** ”

She stops at Quinn’s hand pressing more firmly against her own and the shock of such simple, unassuming physical contact is a surprise that Marley welcomes after only a moment’s hesitation. The blonde fixes her with a stare so knowing, as if through one passage of a book she’s seen the sum of Marley’s soul, and she says, voice raspy with too-much-sleep and too-little-speech, “ **She’s cute, I thought, but you don’t need a girl who treats you like you’re ten: You’ve already got a mom.** ”

Marley thinks back to a passage that had resonated with her a few days ago, determined to play Quinn’s game for as long as she’s allowed. This is the closest they’ve come to a real conversation in a long, long time, and while what she is about to say is not entirely accurate, Quinn will surely understand what she means. “ **I felt the unfairness of it, the inarguable injustice of loving someone who might have loved you back but can’t due to deadness.** ”

Quinn quirks an eyebrow and she looks…impeccable (perfect) in Marley’s eyes even though she’s sleep-rumpled and angry underneath it all. When Quinn speaks, she says, voice a little surer now than before, “ **I’m sorry. I know you loved her. It was hard not to**.”

Marley grins because she knows. She knows that Quinn knows that for Marley, not loving Quinn had never been an option. Somebody somewhere else had planned it, and she’d done what the plans had told her she needed to do. She’s still doing it. Forgiving Quinn her eccentricities and her hang-ups; she isn’t waiting around anymore either. She’s here, with Quinn, because she’s chosen the blonde over everything—it isn’t her job to fix the woman at her side, only to love her, and that is what she will do.

Quinn’s hand comes up, brushes a stray lock of hair from her cheek, and Marley almost, _almost_ shivers at the contact.

They’re getting somewhere, she can feel it, and even though she has no idea where they’re getting she knows it much in the same way that she knows how to breathe. “ **I wanted to be one of those people who have streaks to maintain, who scorch the ground with their intensity. But for now, at least I knew such people, and they needed me, just like comets need tails.** ”

At this Quinn smiles and nods her head. It’s clear to the brunette that Quinn fully accepts that their life together has become one of necessity. The other people in their life have become so big, so bright, that they can continue to hang on—and they will—but ultimately, they’re going to need to become their own comets. Perhaps they can become one together? Marley hopes so, at any rate; separation is no longer an option, really, because they are the only ones who can even begin to comprehend how the other functions.

The only ones who can even begin to understand how to help each other shine.

“ **Why don’t we break up? I guess I stay with her because she stays with me. And that’s not an easy thing to do.** ” There’s a wry affection in Quinn’s voice. Marley clings to that affection, allows it to spread its warmth throughout her entire body. It makes her laugh, just a little.

Her laughter is apparently infectious, because even through her slowly-dissipating anger Quinn’s chuckles escape through parted lips. Then the silence is back as quickly as it had left and Marley still has one thing to say before she has to get up and start making dinner. “ **You can’t just make me different and then leave. Because I was fine before.** ”

Marley smiles at Quinn, a small smile, a sad smile, before she gets up from her perch on the armchair. She feels Quinn’s hand give a squeeze to hers and she squeezes back before beginning to pull away. The blonde does not pull her back.

It isn’t until she reaches the door that Quinn speaks once more.

“Marley… **We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreparably broken.** ” Quinn then gives her the softest, shiest, most vulnerable smile that Marley believes the blonde has ever given anybody; and it’s enough.

 

No, it doesn’t mend what had been previously broken between the two of them.

 

Nothing in this world could do that.

 

However, Marley thinks as she leaves, as she begins to dance around the kitchen in search of ingredients, there is hope and it needs only to be nurtured. She and Quinn may have another chance at something greater than what they’d originally planned for themselves. If they put just a little more blind faith into each other, into the words that they have and the words they feel they can only find elsewhere, maybe, just maybe, they’ll turn out just fine. Something tells her that they will.

She just has to keep on holding on to her hope. 

**Author's Note:**

> HI GLEE FANDOM, I'M BAAACK. I mean, technically I was never _here_ on AO3, but I was a part of you on fanfiction.net, and I just had to return to my roots a bit...couldn't help it.
> 
> Reposted after a serious reworking, and I gotta say, I am weirdly happy with this fic for a reason I don't know. Oh well. Anyway, if you want to let me know what you thought or just wanna talk or ask questions or request something for me to write or whatever, hit me up [ on Tumblr ](https://lazywritergirl.tumblr.com)!


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